{"id":205,"date":"2007-12-03T07:33:54","date_gmt":"2007-12-03T11:33:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=205"},"modified":"2008-01-29T11:41:10","modified_gmt":"2008-01-29T15:41:10","slug":"halloween-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/?p=205","title":{"rendered":"Halloween Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

No, not the book<\/a>\"\", although it’s a fine read. A real Halloween Tree.<\/p>\n

I have a number of unusual Christmas-tree ornaments in the form of folk-art wooden ghosts, blown-glass spider webs, and much else; it’s surprising the ghoulish decorations you can find if you put your mind to it. Every year I joke that if I get one more gothy ornament I’m going to spray-paint the tree black and call it a day. I won’t actually go that far, at least not until Shadowboy reacts to this<\/a> with a chuckle instead of wide-eyed horror, but in the meantime I can dream.<\/p>\n

This month I think I’ll do a series on handmade spooky tree ornaments. Obviously, you can adapt these to the more traditional color palette if you really have to, but if that’s your gig you may be barking up the wrong blog.<\/p>\n

Let’s start with an easy one that actually has a little bit of mainstream credibility: The Christmas Spider.<\/p>\n

The pith of the gist of the legend is that on one long-ago Christmas Eve, spiders crawled all over an undecorated Christmas tree and spun their webs, thus inspiring the tinsel that adorns many modern trees and cats’ digestive tracts. It’s therefore pretty easy to find “real” decorations with a spider or web motif, such as this one<\/a>\"\". (This also makes it easier to convince less-gothy relatives to let you hang up a few spiders.)<\/p>\n

However, it’s very simple to make your own spiders, which gives you the opportunity to personalize them. Depending upon the materials you use they can be large or small (which are also suitable for jewelry), flashy or somber, and any color you like.<\/p>\n

What you need are two round things, one about half the size of the other, for the head and body. These can be beads, round ornaments, balls of clay, nuts (a walnut and an acorn would be nicely rustic), or whatever other round things strike your fancy. Then you need some long wiry things for the legs: Pipe cleaners, strung seed beads, gold wire, and et cetera. Finally you need some way to stick it all together. That, at its core, is it. The fun comes in deciding which materials to use and what embellishments to add.<\/p>\n

Some ideas from around the Web (har!) include this<\/a> one, made from a glass ball ornament, a wooden bead, and pipe cleaners; this<\/a> flashy thing made from polymer clay and beads; this<\/a> one made from jingle bells, and three different takes on beaded spiders, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>. There’s also this one<\/a> (bottom left corner), which doesn’t have instructions but I like because it’s so elegant.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, if needlework is more your thing, do a cross-stitch ornament using a pattern such as this one<\/a>. You can either stitch it on a stiff plastic grid and then cut it to size, or stitch on fabric and frame it; most craft stores should carry the little frames designed for that purpose.<\/p>\n

If you like to paint, you can paint spiders on a glass ornament. I particularly like this<\/a> example, since the colors seem Christmas-y while still having a Halloween vibe.<\/p>\n

If you’re into working with glass, do a stained-glass ornament. The whole idea here is to pick the medium you most like to work in and leverage the Christmas Spider legend to inspire an ornament.<\/p>\n

I’d love to see examples of any of the ornaments you decide to make, so please send pictures and I’ll post them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, not the book, although it’s a fine read. A real Halloween Tree. I have a number of unusual Christmas-tree ornaments in the form of folk-art wooden ghosts, blown-glass spider webs, and much else; it’s surprising the ghoulish decorations you can find if you put your mind to it. Every year I joke that if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doom-it-yourself","category-paint-it-black"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shadowmanor.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}